Game Profile

Andrew Pontious' Rematch is the Aisle of puzzle games: a single move is your
window of opportunity to avert a negative outcome, which means you will have to
replay again and again. 147 times, in my case.

In some ways this is the ultimate timed puzzle, and I don't always like timed
puzzles. "Change in the Weather," wonderful though it was in other respects,
drove me just about nuts. I survived the experience only with a walkthrough and
laudanum. Since "Rematch" is just the one move, however, you don't have a long
sequence to replay only to fail. The structure also enforces careful puzzle
design: one common complaint about bad puzzles is that they don't give enough
feedback when you are close to, but have not yet arrived at, the solution. In
Rematch, everything you can do necessarily produces some outcome, often an
instructive one.

Rematch also accomplishes nicely a difficult task of IF recently discussed on
rgif: encouraging the player to use non-standard verbs and syntax in order to
accomplish game-specific goals. There are a number of verbs in the game that
fall outside the normal lexicon of IF games. More to the point, however,
Pontious has hacked the parser to accept much longer than normal input strings,
with multiple indirect objects, for instance. I wouldn't have attempted these
except that game play seemed to demand it; after my first few successes in this
direction I had greater and greater faith in the game's ability to understand
the most outlandish sequences (and, in many cases, to have an interesting
outcome for them.)

This combines with the game's other embedded hints to make for a
forward-moving rather than stuck-and-frustrated play experience most of the
time, and Pontious has also taken care to provide colorful or entertaining
outcomes for verbs that aren't immediately relevant to the puzzle, so that
experimentation is rewarded. Helpful also is the auto-undo command, which undoes
your actions each time you fail.

The one-turn format does also work against the puzzle, though -- or at least
it did for me. In order to reach a solution, you need to do a certain amount of
exploration -- gathering information, but at the cost of losing over and over
again. This might have been less of an issue had the event-to-be-prevented been
less horrific. As it was I felt faintly guilty doing things that were not direct
attempts at solution, and it wasn't until I was actually told to explore more
that I had the gumption to ignore the outcome and do so systematically.

Approached with this systematic detachment, it's a successful if somewhat
evil puzzle. I was confused when it was going on, then gradually had more and
more of a sense of what I wanted to do; at the end, however, it all clicked
together with a satisfying snap, leaving no loose ends.

As writing or story I think it is slightly less successful. Even excellent
descriptions and dialogue begin to pall on the 129th reading, and much of the
NPC conversation has a somewhat stiff and unconvincing quality. There is a good
reason for this, gameplay-wise, but it lends strength to the impression,
especially on repeated playings, that these are clockwork people carrying out
their clockwork functions in a world where you alone are sentient.

I mention this only because there is a story and characterization going on
here: adumbrated in the opening words of the game is the relationship you have
with the other characters, and the more you play the clearer the situation
becomes. It is significant not only from a puzzle point of view but also for the
whole flavor of the game; but it never develops beyond a certain point, because
the scope for development of complicated interrelationships is necessarily
somewhat limited here. Shallowly worked out, but thematically important. My PC's
frustration with the unstoppable cycle of Fate (the puzzle, the disaster, which
play out over and over again) mingles with his frustration over the
interpersonal situation. This far, I think, it is effective. On the other hand,
the aforementioned need to distance myself from the urgency of the puzzle
distracts me from viewing the characters as characters and encourages the
attitude that they are merely cogs in a complex interlocking gear system.

Deeply moving narrative, then, it is not, partly because that is not its
purpose (arguably) and partly because the puzzle goes to war with the story
aspect and wins. As a puzzle, though, it's an entertaining and rewarding one.